Citation

Farrer C, Frey SH, Van Horn JD, Tunik E, Turk D, Inati S, Grafton ST. Cereb. Cortex 2008; 18(2): 254-261.

Affiliation

Centre de Neuroscience Cognitive, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, CNRS, 69675 Lyon, France. farrer@isc.cnrs.fr

Copyright

(Copyright © 2008, Oxford University Press)

DOI

10.1093/cercor/bhm050

PMID

17490989

Abstract

Involvement of the right inferior parietal area in action awareness was investigated while taking into account differences in the conscious experiences of one's own actions; especially, the awareness that an intended action is consistent with movement consequences and the awareness of the authorship of the action (i.e., the sense of agency). We hypothesized that these experiences are both associated with processes implemented in inferior parietal cortex, specifically, right angular gyrus (Ag). Two blood-oxygenation-level-dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging studies employed a novel delayed visual feedback technique to distinguish the neural correlates of these 2 forms of action awareness. We showed that right Ag is associated with both awareness of discrepancy between intended and movement consequences and awareness of action authorship. We propose that this region is involved in higher-order aspects of motor control that allows one to consciously access different aspects of one's own actions. Specifically, this region processes discrepancies between intended action and movement consequences in such a way that these will be consciously detected by the subject. This joint processing is at the core of the various experiences one uses to interpret an action.

Language: en